{"id":187620,"date":"2025-09-28T13:22:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T13:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/187620\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T13:22:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T13:22:10","slug":"go-experts-i-dont-want-to-maintain-ai-generated-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/187620\/","title":{"rendered":"Go Experts: ‘I Don’t Want to Maintain AI-Generated Code’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a moment for our time \u2014 two long-time Go programmers<\/a> pondering the future of their language, and how it will be impacted by AI\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been building software systems for the last two decades,\u201d writes Quebec-based programmer\u00a0Dominic St-Pierre<\/a>, who,\u00a0according to his website,<\/a>\u00a0heads the business software consultancy\u00a0Focus Centric<\/a>.\u00a0But with an interest<\/a> in teaching<\/a>, he\u2019s also launched a YouTube channel<\/a> of programming tutorials \u2014 mostly Go \u2014 and also a Go podcast with over 800 subscribers. For years, he\u2019s been sharing the joy of programming\u2026<\/p>\n

He asked: How should he react to the AI-generated code now appearing at the businesses where he consults?<\/p>\n

Earlier this month St. Pierre\u2019s podcast hosted programming educator<\/a>\/author<\/a> John Arundel, who self-published For the Love of Go<\/a> in 2021, and has recently released a heavily revised edition called The Deeper Love of Go.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

Together, the two Go programmers shared their notes from the real world<\/a> \u2014 from production, from their respective consulting gigs, from Arundel\u2019s ongoing SaaS development, and from their years as dedicated programming educators.<\/p>\n

The podcast captured not just their thoughtful discussion about where we\u2019re heading, but also where things stand right now \u2014 seeing the growing popularity of Go, the rise of AI, and how it could all end up dramatically transforming the programming world that they love\u2026<\/p>\n

The Rising Popularity of Go and AI Tools<\/p>\n

Arundel, the author, noted that even as he was wondering about\u00a0Go\u2019s future<\/a>, \u201cIt kind of bounced back a little bit.\u201d\u00a0And St. Pierre agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I\u2019ve seen a little bit of spike lately, let\u2019s say in the last six months, maybe.\u201d And that gut feeling seems supported by statistics. By last November,\u00a0Go had jumped to its all-time highest position<\/a> on TIOBE\u2019s ranking of programming language popularity \u2014 #7 \u2014 with TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen saying Go was fast, easy to learn, easy to deploy, and easy to understand.\u00a0Jansen concluded that in TIOBE\u2019s rankings, \u201cIf annual trends continue this way, Go will bypass JavaScript within three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

The Tiobe Index shows Go\u2019s percentage of their tracked metrics suddenly starting to rise around December of 2023<\/p>\n

And in Stack Overflow\u2019s annual developer survey, 16.4% of respondents said they used Go<\/a> in 2025, up from 13.5%<\/a> the year before. So Arundel predicts later that our status quo \u2014 a world filled with Go \u2014 will last \u201ccertainly several decades\u2026 Go is just so embedded in the fabric of the cloud and internet and everything else. It\u2019s going to be with us until long after the apocalypse, probably!\u201d<\/p>\n

But St. Pierre has also taken note of a new surge in AI tools \u2014 and even a surge in AI-generated CLI tools being submitted to the Go subreddit. While trying AI tools, St. Pierre has discovered just how easy AI makes it to build things in Go. Maybe Go\u2019s popularity was being helped along by its easy compatibility with code-generating AI tools? Thanks to Go\u2019s portability, \u201cyou can deploy them in all sorts of OS and things like that by default.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arundel agreed that AI may be getting people past those first few blocks. \u201cIt\u2019s making it way easier for them to just build something, and post it to Reddit!\u201d he said with a laugh. (Arundel added later that Go \u201cseems to be well-suited to being generated by the yard by AIs, because it\u2019s a fairly syntactical language.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The Go team is indeed actively pursuing the AI demographic. As Go celebrated its 15th anniversary last November, Go lead Austin Clements specifically said that the core team was \u201cworking on making Go better for AI<\/a> \u2014 and AI better for Go \u2014 by enhancing Go\u2019s capabilities in AI infrastructure, applications, and developer assistance.\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cGo is a great language for building production systems, and we want it to be a great language for building production AI systems, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Clement also promised the Go team would continue building out first-class support for Go in popular AI SDKs, including LangChainGo and Genkit\u2026<\/p>\n

The Challenge of Mediocre AI-Generated Code<\/p>\n

How does this play out in the real world? While AI could be causing problems for Reddit moderators, St. Pierre thinks the problems extend further, with people creating products they \u201cprobably should not\u201d \u2014 and confronting users with extra choices. \u201cInstead of having one or two really decent choices, you have 30 \u2014 but 22 of them will close in the next two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s even raising questions in his consulting business now, since \u201cThe mediocrity now is accepted everywhere \u2014 and I have so many difficulties with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Arundel had a good comeback. \u201cDon\u2019t you think if there\u2019s more bad software, people will need consultants more?\u201d<\/p>\n

But St. Pierre\u2019s thoughts lie with the poor consultants. \u201cThe thing that I\u2019ve seen so far is that the bar to accept deliverables is very low\u2026\u201d And after running some tests with Claude, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but it\u2019s not good code. And I would not want to be in a team that produced that kind of code.\u201d Laughing, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to maintain code that the AI generates, because it\u2019s mostly not good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arundel jokingly shared a different concern. \u201cI just wish they hadn\u2019t chosen the name \u2018agents\u2019. I mean, that just makes me think of The Matrix. Because they\u2019re the bad guys, aren\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Bad AI Code Worse Than Bad Human Code?<\/p>\n

But more seriously, Arundel said he understands St. Pierre\u2019s frustration with sloppy AI-generated code<\/a>, \u201cand I think maybe everybody\u2019s grappling with this \u2014 and just how you choose to decide you\u2019re going to feel about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think I\u2019ve decided that I\u2019m going to feel optimistic, reasoning this is going to bring lots of people into the world of programming, which is a fun world. And if that means more people learning, that maybe means more demand for my books or mentoring, or whatever. But even if not\u2026 that\u2019s okay. I\u2019ll get by.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think it\u2019s kind of nice if it\u2019s introducing a whole new generation of people to getting into this, which maybe they wouldn\u2019t have got into if it wasn\u2019t for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arundel added that \u201cit\u2019s not like software used to be perfect when it was written by humans.\u201d So even if AI-generated code sucks, \u201cIt probably sucks about the same amount. Software has always been terrible. It\u2019s just suddenly there\u2019s a great deal more of it, and it\u2019s far cheaper to crank it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s come to an interesting counterpoint. \u201cIs bad software produced by AI any worse than bad software produced by humans?\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Pierre saw a key difference. \u201cThe amount of things that the AI is outputting is overwhelming! So now you don\u2019t even want to do any kind of review, because instead of reflecting and thinking about the problem and things like that, now you are receiving a gazillion pull requests\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Arundel acknowledged that today\u2019s software engineers probably now spend more time reviewing and fixing AI-generated code \u2014 along with issuing new prompts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd maybe they would\u2019ve done that previously with human juniors, or something \u2014 but I think it\u2019s a lot easier to teach humans, isn\u2019t it?\u201d He said with a laugh, \u201d I mean, you keep telling Claude stuff, and he just doesn\u2019t seem to get it somehow\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

An Optimistic Outlook on the Future of Programming<\/p>\n

But Arundel had another point. \u201cIf the part of the job that appealed to you was typing out functions and Go files and things, of course, now you won\u2019t get much of a chance to do that anymore, which is a shame. Your job is going to be more about reviewing and fixing and guiding other people\u2019s code and cudgeling it into some sort of decent architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although on the other hand \u2014 \u201cSome people enjoy that.\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Pierre sees something else that\u2019s lost: the joy of seeing young programmers realize their potential. \u201cI was enjoying hiring a junior, training a person\u2026 and seeing them explode and beat me at some point. That is fun. That was what I was liking.\u201d If junior developers are now using AI \u2014 and learning from AI-generated codebases \u2014 will their learning suffer? \u201cI\u2019m just a little bit concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he also thinks there\u2019s been a little too much hype \u2014 and can\u2019t wait for the pendulum to swing back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the state of the world at the moment, I don\u2019t think that we are ready for AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arundel acknowledges it\u2019s hard to talk about this without sounding like a grumpy curmudgeon \u2014 and tries to strike a philosophical note. Things travel in circles, pendulums swing back, and our future just isn\u2019t 100% clear. \u201cWhere we are now is a very weird and transitional time, and things are probably going to shake out differently to what we imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n

And whatever happens, in his opinion, programming \u201cis not going to go away, as an activity. People are going to continue to do it. Even if there was zero economic value to it \u2014 which I doubt \u2014 I think people would still do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it\u2019s fun!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Cassel is a proud resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, where he’s been covering technology news for more than two decades. Over the years his articles have appeared everywhere from CNN, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal Interactive…\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tRead more from David Cassel\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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